This story is about fishing, but of course fishing is just a metaphone. It is really about anything that you and your children are passionate about.
When my son first started learning to fish, he was at the local stream, using a piece of string on a stick. This was fine, and it was great for most of the other kids there because it was free and provided them with all the basics that they needed. Yet it was easy to see that my son was a very gifted angler from an early age and he was clearly frustrated with his progress. He wasn't getting the support from the people around him at the stream, plus the lack of proper fishing equipment was evidently affecting his ability to develop.
Luckily we became aware of an exam that he could take which could potentially open up access to a huge range of high class fishing spots all around the country. We were warned that it was a grueling process to break into this world of private fisheries and was likely to be extremely expensive. Nevertheless, our son was determined to give it a try because he understood that he could achieve so much more if given the right opportunities. He was only six at this point, and the exam would take up a good year of his childhood in extra study and preparation and he would be competing against kids from all over the world, most of whom had been preparing for this at private pre-fisheries since they were born.
As so we looked at our finances, long and hard. In order to give him a fighting chance at passing the exam we knew we had no choice but to pay for extra fishing lessons away from the stream, and to invest in some professional fishing equipment. There was no guarantee that he would pass the exam and it could all have been for nothing, but the passion our son showed made it all worthwhile.
A year later, our son sat the exam (there were actually many exams as each fishery had their own process). To our delight, through his hard work and sheer determination he did incredibly well. He was offered places at several different fisheries, fisheries with reputations as some of the best in the country! We were over the moon and our son was elated.
With the high of his success came the deep worry of how we would actually afford the place that our son had earned. The fishery he wanted to attend was ranked 3rd in the country and oh boy did they know it! The cost of attending made the expense of the past year pale in comparison. But there was no way we were going to give up now. Again we looked at our finances. We had no savings as we'd spent everything we had on the extra tuition and resources to ensure he could compete in the exam, and we had no family in a position to support us, having both grown up in much more humble conditions than we now found ourselves. With enough sacrifice though, and if I could secure the promotion I'd been working towards, we could just about make it work. It wouldn't be easy for any of us and life would be extremely tough, but if it meant our son could reach his full potential then everything would be worth it.
And so my son began his journey in this new world of elite fisheries, and he began to thrive. We found ourselves in a strange new land, surrounded by people with unimaginable wealth and opportunities at their disposal, but also by many other families like ourselves who were giving up everything to support their children and give them the opportunity to participate in this exciting and enriching environment.
At work, my colleagues were moving out of their starter flats, buying family homes with luxuries like gardens and second toilets, purchasing cars on finance, going on holiday (abroad!), surprising their wives with romantic weekend getaways and generally doing all the things that most people with a decent salary like mine take for granted. We, on the other hand, spent our evenings in our small apartment, sitting at the Ikea table combing through our expenses, looking for ways to save a few pounds here and there, cook more efficiently, mend old clothes, and worrying about how to afford the latest hike in the mortgage, the council tax, the electricity, the food shop, and so on.
But it didn't matter, because our son was not only thriving and becoming an excellent angler at the fishery, he was also learning about so much more than just fish. He was being exposed to so many new and fascinating opportunities. He had picked up musical instruments, he was a confident speaker and team player, he was learning new languages, and he was so far ahead of where he would have been at the local stream as to be unrecognisable. He was full of a sense of achievement and confidence, and above all he was happy.
And so we were happy too, despite the daily struggle to balance our finances and the constant bombardment from all sides by the ever increasing cost of living. We were happy that we could make things work, that my salary was just enough to cover our expenses, that we could still put food on the table and keep the meagre roof over our heads, and that we could watch our son grow and thrive and come home every day glowing with new knowledge.
And then the government decided that the children of families who work hard, save hard, and sacrifice everything do not deserve to attend these elite fisheries. That the likes of us should be forced to use the local stream along with everyone else who works for a living. That only the properly rich, those with trust funds and investments and property portfolios and generational wealth, those who don't have to work or save or sacrifice, only those kind of people should be allowed to send their children to these elite fisheries. Not us pretenders. Us who earn a salary. Us who pay the lions share of taxes. No, we should not be allowed to strive to better our children's future. After all, it was from these elite fisheries that most of the people in government came, and they didn't want to see us in with a chance at the kind of opportunities they had when growing up.
They realised that the money we had earned (and which the government had already taken 45% of before we even received it) was not being spent on "stuff" (that is, useless consumer items that people don't need), and so they were not getting their extra taxes when we spent our money, and it was not being saved so they could not get their extra taxes from our savings either. They realised that we were investing our money in something they couldn't tax (yet): education, knowledge, our children's future.
And so they changed the law and taxed the money that we invested in our children. But they didn't do this in a way that would allow us to adjust our life to meet this new onslaught of cost with careful planning, or time to get another promotion, to get a new job, get a second/third job, or whatever it took to meet this fresh demand for more money. No, they engineered it so that the likes of us would have no chance to attempt to meet this sudden, insurmountable financial burden. They said this new tax would be payable immediately. And to make sure that the fisheries couldn't soften the blow for their hard working families, they also hit the fisheries with many additional taxes at the same time. This ensured that the fisheries were forced to pass on the full burden of the education tax and had much less of the money they usually set aside to support struggling families through hard times. They had thought this one through with cunning and malicious intent, and there was no escape for the likes of us.
Our son, our bright, gifted son who is brimming with potential is nine years old and has made firm friends among his peers at the elite fishery that he worked so hard to get into, forming childhood bonds that should have lasted a lifetime. He is at the peak of his curiosity and educational awakening.
Yet now he has been ripped from this place that he earned through hard work and determination and talent and is back at the local stream. He doesn't understand why. He is confused and conflicted. He is angry. At us, at the world. His spirit has been crushed. His belief that with enough hard work he can achieve anything he puts his mind to has been destroyed. He is years ahead of his peers and he barely recognises the string on a stick that they expect him to catch fish with. He has no interest in what they have to teach him.
Our investment in his future, the money, the years of hardship, the sacrifices, his year of childhood lost to exam preparation, it was all for nothing. Worse than nothing in fact. We have not only lost those years of our lives, the time, the money, we have lost our happy, determined little boy. He is crushed. We have less than when we started in every single way.
With one cruel and spiteful swipe, the government has taken everything from us, just because we dared to believe in a better future for our child.